Friday's roundup:
1. A Louisiana judge considering the state's voucher program [2] changes his mind, saying now he may need more time to decide after oral arguments today.
2. Los Angeles doubles the number of teachers in "rubber rooms [3]."
3. Have education reformers drunk the Common Core Kool-Aid [4]?
4. States spend $1.7 billion on testing [5] each year, a new report estimates.
5. California schools borrowed $2.8 billion that will cost them $16.3 billion to pay off [6].
6. Boston school administrators are trying to predict which schools parents would choose [7] if they could.
7. Teachers aren't the only ones who cheat [8]--so do half of students.
8. Special education spending grows [9] as enrollment and learning lags in Iowa.
9. Could Common Core tests establish low cut scores [10], making kids look better educated than they are?
10. Because Illinois keeps putting off paying its bills [11], schools and services have $3.6 billion less this year.
Thursday's roundup:
1. Louisiana's teachers union sues to keep kids inside failing schools [12]. The case will likely conclude this week [13].
2. Wisconsin teachers explain why they are glad to have alternatives to joining a union [14].
3. Forty percent of Milwaukee students attend choice schools [15].
4. Oklahomans float the idea of vouchers for students attending unsafe schools [16].
5. Leaders of large, poorly performing Tennessee school districts don't like the idea of vouchers [17].
6. A Common Core testing coalition releases a draft of what it believes students should know at every grade level [18].
7. Ohio charter schools demand shutdowns [19] of poor-performing charters.
8. Illinois lawmakers bicker over legislation to let Chicago name school closures [20] four months later.
9. Approximately 17 percent of applicants for federal education grants [21] have made the final round, the U.S. Education Department announced.
10. Is a college degree worth [22] the cost (video)?
Wednesday's roundup:
1. After a tug of war with the feds, Pennsylvania will seek a No Child Left Behind waiver [23].
2. New Jersey charter schools perform better [24] than traditional public schools, particularly with poor and minority students, a new report concludes.
3. Will the Common Core turn preschool into the work farm [25]?
4. Utah is getting into tests that change as a student takes them [26].
5. Ohio lawmakers are moving a school A-F grading bill [27] forward.
6. Technology in education [28] is just a tool.
7. Chicago leaders try to compromise on inevitable school closings [29].
8. Follow a series on "where your public school dollars go [30]" in large districts.
9. A student center in New Mexico will cost taxpayers $5 million more [31] than the planned $15 million.
10. There is no one right way [32] to redesign education.
Tuesday's roundup:
1. The U.S. Department of Education releases more accurate state-by-state graduation rates [33]. Iowa tops the list at 88 percent, and Washington DC bottoms it out at 59 percent.
2. A fine article outlines how Kansas schools, like most in the country, work to implement federal teacher evaluation [34]requirements.
3. A former New Orleans schools chief works a quiet, budding transformation in Saint Louis [35].
4. Tennessee vouchers should include public school choice [36], state lawmakers say.
5. Nearly a third of Minnesota high schoolers are expected to fail the graduation math test [37], so educators want to graduate them anyway.
6. Pennsylvania's pension system [38] is eating away at every state expenditure.
7. One Florida college has taken up Gov. Rick Scott's challenge to create a $10,000 bachelor's degree [39].
8. More states are showing what an average graduate earns [40]after graduating from different colleges.
9. South Dakota plans to use a one-time tax windfall partly on higher education spending. [41]
10. A high number of education-related bill requests [42] have been filed in Nevada ahead of the 2013 legislative session.
Monday's roundup:
1. A federal investigation uncovers teachers in three states allegedly hiring doubles to take their teaching certification tests [43].
2. After helping engineer the country's first successful "parent trigger" to wrangle control of a persistently failing school from local bureaucracy, a mother won election to th